Humanverse

Gwendolyn vs Gwenyth

American parents have registered 124,718 Gwendolyns since 1880, against 3,268 Gwenyths. Gwendolyn is still ahead, with 848 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Gwendolyn against Gwenyth, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Gwendolyn Gwenyth

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Gwendolyn has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2010, when Gwendolyn had 518 and Gwenyth had 161.

Side by side

  Gwendolyn Gwenyth
Total US births 124,7183,268
Most in one year 3,531176
Babies in 2025 84856
Estimated living today 86,0003,100
Median age today 6414
Peak year 19532013
Best rank 112th girls1,328th girls
Rank in 2025 360th2,957th
First recorded 18801921
Girls / boys 124,385 / 3333,268 / 0

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Gwendolyns alive today are over 64; half the Gwenyths are over 14. That is 50 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Gwendolyn Gwenyth
England and Wales 36516

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Gwendolyn and Gwenyth.